North Korean team worry for oppressed comrade Ronaldo

The North Korean World Cup team has sent fraternal greetings to their worker brothers in the Portugal squad ahead of their Group G clash on Monday evening. However, many of the Chollami squad have expressed concern for the well-being of the Portuguese players, particuarly the increasingly gaunt-looking midfielder Cristiano Ronaldo.

'You just have to look at them,' said striker Jong Tae-Se, whose patriotic tears during the North Korean anthem stirred viewers back home into Pyongyang to ever greater devotion to the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il. 'Simao, Danny, Mendes, Bruno Alves - they're all as skinny as rakes. I'd be surprised if they are even on half rations of rice.'

The North Korea camp is confident that the application of Kim Jong-Il thought should see them safely past the effete bourgeois tactics of the European colonialists. That said, goalkeeper Ri Myung-Guk told reporters, there are no easy games at the World Cup and added that they are taking one game at a time over the full 90 minutes at the end of the day.

It has emerged that North Korea will have to play the rest of their matches without midfielder Ri Kwang-Chon, who has been invited to make a self-criticism with a service revolver after dragging a half-chance wide in the team's 2-1 moral victory over Brazil. However, working class solidarity comes first and most of the squad are particularly worried about Ronaldo's health.

'Not only does he look starved,' said midfielder Ji Yun Nam, scorer of the goal that cheered workers across the world, 'I heard the poor man has been sold like an animal from an American corporation in England to the plaything of the fascist dictator of Spain. And it looks as if he has been forced to tint his hair and wear an ear-ring like a woman for the entertainment of the depraved capitalists of Europe. It's hard to believe that such cruelty still goes on in today's world.'